Shishir's Color-What-Matters Calendar Guide

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Shishir's Color-What-Matters Calendar Guide

Shishir's Color-What-Matters Calendar Guide

Assign Categories to Colors

Get started by renaming the category for each calendar color. You'll use these to categorize all your calendar events.

Time for the key step. Remember:

We should use names as proxies for colors, not the other way around.

So it’s time to break the habit ー what does tomato really represent? This exercise will help you identify a Category for every color.

The table below has a row for each of the Google Calendar colors. Remember, because Google Calendar only

supports⁠

10

⁠

colors (well, 11, if you count the

@Default⁠

color), you’ll need to limit your list to that number of unique categories.

Pro-tip: You can change the default color in Google Calendar

See instructions

here⁠

. Note: if you changed your default color from Peacock, you can update the hex code below, and change conditional formats to match.

Now time for your key step: Change the category name to be something meaningful to you. A few tips:

You could “derive” the name you’re currently using for colors. The table below shows a sampling of

000

⁠

of your current events with that color. How would you describe that group?

Or you can just start from scratch. Make a list of the (up to 10) key Categories you’d like to use. I personally use the same colors from my

ToDo list⁠

. In the next step, you can use this doc to recategorize events to match.

I avoid treating “Default” as a category. I aim to have no meetings with that color ー that way I know when I have finished coloring my calendar. So just leave "Default” as is - no need to rename it.

⁠

Rename the categories below to something meaningful to you

Color

Category Name

GCal Color Name

GCal Hex Code

Google Calendar Events List [subset]

Work time

Banana

#f6bf26

⁠

Deep work block

Hiring, managing, and growing talent

Sage

#33b679

⁠

All hands meeting

⁠

Virtual lunch with mobile team

Managing the product

Grape

#8d24aa

⁠

Weekly product kickoff

⁠

Infra review

1-1 meetings

Flamingo

#e67b73

⁠

Lola <> Maria 1-1

⁠

Adam <> Lola 1-1

Board of directors

Lavender

#7986cb

⁠

Board meeting prep

Personal

Graphite

#606060

⁠

Meditation & reading

⁠

Gym

Misc 1

Tomato

#d50000

Misc 2

Tangerine

#f4511e

Misc 3

Basil

#0c7f42

Misc 4

Blueberry

#3f50b5

Default

Peacock

#049be5

There are no rows in this table

⁠

Finished mapping colors to categories? You're ready to
`Color Code your Calendar`⁠
.

Gallery

Want to print your doc?
This is not the way.

Try clicking the ⋯ next to your doc name or using a keyboard shortcut (

CtrlP

) instead.

Assign Categories to Colors

Rename the categories below to something meaningful to you

Finished mapping colors to categories? You're ready to Color Code your Calendar⁠.

Finished mapping colors to categories? You're ready to
`Color Code your Calendar`⁠
.